2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of national Prohibition, which officially took effect on January 17, 1920. To commemorate the centennial of the “noble experiment” I thought it would be interesting to delve into the local history of Prohibition.

Chapter Two of Bend Beer details this time period, and I’ve excerpted some of that chapter here. It was one of my favorite chapters to write because I found it to be one of the most fascinating and surprising periods in Central Oregon history.

Oregon experienced prohibition earlier than the 1920 starting date; in fact, Oregon went “dry” starting in 1916. But did you know that Crook County (at the time, encompassing all of Central Oregon) also went “dry” for a year and a half starting in 1908? Here’s a short timeline of prohibition and the temperance movement in Oregon:

• 1844: The Provisional Government of the Oregon territory passed a prohibition law that was to prevent “the introduction, distillation, or sale of ardent spirits” in Oregon. (This only lasted a few years.)
• 1854: A prohibition petition was circulated and signed by 74 people to ban liquor (it was denied).
• 1887: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the national Prohibition Party managed to get a strict prohibition measure on the Oregon state ballot for the election of that year. (Defeated by 3-to-1 margin.)
• 1904: The WCTU and Anti-Saloon League (ASL) were successful in getting a local option bill passed in Oregon.
• 1908: Crook County votes to go “dry” under Local Option laws, going into effect June 30. (Crook County at the time encompassed all of present day Crook, Deschutes, and Jefferson counties.)
• 1910: Crook County’s local prohibition repealed at November election.
• 1914: A state prohibition measure was once again placed on the ballot. It passes!
• 1916: Oregon becomes a bone-dry state on January 1.
• 1920: National Prohibition goes into effect January 17.
• 1933: National Prohibition repealed on December 5. In Oregon, the OLCC was created to regulate alcohol in the state.

You can find various stories related to Prohibition throughout the Bend Bulletin at the time, but by far the most sensational event occurred on Monday, March 8, 1926. At three in the morning, when “a terrific explosion rocked the Congress apartments, located at the corner of Bend’s Congress Street and Hood Place southwest of downtown.”

The cause? Dynamite. The targets: state Prohibition officers A. F. “Buck” Mariott and C. C. McBride, who had been involved in the shooting death of suspected moonshiner Vayle Taylor the month before. Mariott and his wife had been sleeping in their apartment at the time of the explosion, and luckily escaped unscathed—due largely to the apparent fact that the would-be assassin was unfamiliar with demolition techniques to properly plant the explosives to accomplish their goal.

I’ll get into the full story of Mariott and McBride (also in the book) in a future “Prohibition in Bend” post. I also plan to dig into some of the background behind how and why Prohibition happened, and share some of the other old Bend Bulletin articles about it.